Two-time Internet Millionaire Jason Isaksen Interviews Michael Senoff

Transcription

HMA
HIDDEN MARKETING ASSETS
University
INTERVIEW SERIES
Two-time Internet Millionaire
Jason Isaksen Interviews
Michael Senoff
Michael Senoff Interviewed By Jason Isaksen
Dear Student,
I’m Michael Senoff, founder and CEO of HardToFindSeminars.com.
For the last five years, I’ve interviewed the world’s best business and marketing minds.
And along the way, I’ve created a successful home-based publishing business all from
my two-car garage.
When my first child was born, he was very sick, and it was then that I knew I had to have
a business that I could operate from home.
Now, my challenge is to build the world’s largest free resource for online, downloadable
audio business interviews.
I knew that I needed a site that contained strategies, solutions, and inside information to
help you operate more efficiently
I’ve learned a lot in the last five years, and today I’m going to show you the skills that
you need to survive.
It is my mission, to assist those that are very busy with their careers
And to really make my site different from every other audio content site on the web,
I have decided to give you access to this information in a downloadable format.
Now, let’s get going.
Michael Senoff
Founder & CEO: www.hardtofindseminars.com
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Michael Senoff Interviewed By
Millionaire
Michael Senoff being interviewed like he has never been interviewed
before. I don't like being interviewed. I like giving interviews. That's
why you will not see too many interviews from me. Here's one where I
reluctantly made an exception. This was an exclusive interview I
agreed to do for Jason's thousands of internet marketing students and
customers. It's 220 minutes. It's segmented into five 30 minute fact
filled sections.
This interview is fast and packed with some of my ideas and
philosophies about marketing and business and one secret I have
never before revealed to anyone until now. I gave Jason's students my
everything holding nothing back. You may also download the 46 page
word for word transcripts to this interview for free. Just download it
below. If you do not have time to listen now, download it to your
computer and listed later. You may distribute this interview freely or
send them to this page. The five part interview was conducted on 0215-04.. Since I interview and review marketing gurus all day for a
living, you can guess I know what works and what don't.
Michael:
Most everybody copies everyone; they don't have the courage to be
original or to try new things because it’s like the blind leading the
blind. They just think if someone else is doing it that it must be
working so there's very few people out there really playing the
game and trying to be original. Everyone has great ideas, but they
discount them their little voice inside them says, nah, that’s not
going to work or they hear their mom saying that’s a stupid idea
and they bury it and they never go through. But one thing I’ve
learned when I get an idea that pops in my head, I will capture it, I’ll
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Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from
home. Help businesses make more money. Listen to hours of free interviews, case studies and how to
consultant training at http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/consulting.htm
write it down, I’ll put it into a little database and I won’t lose it, and
especially if I have a hunch on something I’ll not even think about it
and I will do it.
Jason:
I have a few questions for you. I know you’re real successful at
what you do. I’m curious, do you make all your money through the
Internet, or is there any percentage of business that you do off-line?
Michael:
Most of my income is somehow related to something online. I have
a stream of different incomes and it goes into my main sources of
income is buying and reselling high end marketing seminars like the
Jay Abraham products and you've seen at my website at
hardtofindseminars.com exactly what I do there. So I buy low and I
sell high and it’s as simple as that. And it’s an item that is not
readily available, and the only other place you can get it is either
from Jay Abraham himself which you’ll pay 10 to 20 times as much
money on some of the items, not all the items. I make money that
way and then I have a pen manufacturing business that I’ve been
doing since 1996, which you can read about in my bio at
hardtofindseminars.com and I think you read through it.
Jason:
Yeah, I read through some of it and its pretty good stuff.
Michael:
Just got a call from JC Penney’s and this is one of my pen
products, it's an invisible ink marking pen. And he found me through
the Internet. JC Penney’s is doing a promotion where they are
giving out these gift certificates to all their jewelry buyers and then
their jewelry buyers have to come in with this certificate and they
can redeem it either for a piece of jewelry or some kind of discount.
They’re taking my invisible ink pen and they are marking the back
of these certificates so when people come in they can shine a UV
light on them and make sure they are genuine, so it’s a fraud
prevention program. The phone will ring every day with some new
source of income I never thought of. I'll give you another example.
I've got another website called Hard To Find Ads. Did you go check
out that website?
Jason:
Yeah I did, when I talked to you there. I never have seen anything
like it. I always hear marketers talk about how important it is to
study these archives, ancient materials.
Michael:
Some of this stuff is all the way back to like, 1910.
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Jason:
Michael:
Really, really the most shocking education I got. Seeing how it
almost looked like they were just from today, a lot of them. Like,
just, you know, they were doing the same stuff.
That’s right, ‘cause you and I both know human emotions don't
change, they are the same as when we were cavemen and cave
women, people buy for the same reasons. We're all the same and
we've always been the same all throughout time, so that's why the
successful ad from back in 1910 or 1920 that is successful and
written by someone who knows what they are doing will work today.
Jason:
Now where do you get all those ads?
Michael:
Various number of sources at the hardtofindads.com website. It all
started when I was on eBay, I always look for old ads, because old
ads are like a combination to a safe, if an old ad was successful in
1920 selling a diet product, I've got a copywriter who has probably
spent many, many hours in researching the diet market and selling
a diet product to someone back in the 1920s. Well, that same effort
and work and time and editing and reediting and writing and
rewriting, I get to have it for nothing. And then I can use that ad if I
ever want to promote that diet product or diet related product, those
words, combination of words that have been tested in publications
over and over again, that have been refined over and over again
could work today. That's like buying thousands and thousands of
dollars and hundreds of hours worth of labor of an advertising firm’s
final product.
Jason:
Yeah, had a theory, while looking through your ad archives there,
the older one that you often hear people say, look to see what ads
are repeated over and over so people aren’t just wasting their time
just as ones you see repeated over and over, are the ones making
the most dollars and making people millionaires so I realized, wow,
this is the longest term tracking method there is you know. I, for
instance will buy an issue of Entrepreneur Magazine and I'll wait 6
months or so to buy another issue and compare what is still in there
in that 6 months interval, what guy is still making enough money
towards his ad and then I realized I could do that in a real long term
using your website. Look at some of these ads I'm still seeing today
in even Entrepreneur Magazine or some home business magazine,
that's got to be proof right there that these certain types of ads that
I'm seeing on your site are definitely winners--they've lasted for
over 100 years, what better proof of a good ad than that.
Michael:
Truly incredible, its amazing to see the influence that advertising
has on our lives. I'm looking right now, sitting at my office, staring at
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this little carpet sweeper called a Bissell. A little carpet sweeper
called the “GO”. Now this is a little kind of a mini one that plugs in
and charges up. Everyone knows what a carpet sweeper is, but this
thing is--it's 2004 now, the Bissell was put on the map by a man
named Claude Hopkins and I have Claude Hopkins is regarded as
one of the greatest copywriters of all time. And in his earlier career
he worked with Bissell and promoted their carpet sweepers through
some incredible and ingenious ways which you can read about in
this book called "My Life in Advertising" and if it weren't for Claude
Hopkins back in 1907, I think is when he worked for Bissell, I
wouldn't be looking at this box.
Jason:
That's incredible.
Michael:
And the same thing goes for many things in your home today like
Quaker Oats and Palmolive soap, Pepsodent was one of the first
major toothpastes and it was all done by Claude Hopkins. His
research in finding the correct appeal to promote toothpaste, and
back then toothpaste wasn't something that people normally did. So
he had a lot tougher job than what the toothpaste manufacturers
have to do today. He had to sell people on the idea that it was a
good idea to use toothpaste on your teeth to remove that film--and
those were the key words "that film". He learned this through going
through masses and masses of research about tooth decay and
plaque and all that stuff. We owe it to him as being somewhat the
founder of the toothpaste industry. I think back to your question you
asked me "how did I get started." It all kind of started when I found
on eBay there was someone selling a collection of Readers Digest
Magazines from 1930 to 1960 and I bought them all for about $500
and they were all shipped in these big boxes to me and I started
pouring through them looking at all the ads. There were just
incredible things.
Jason:
You mentioned you had the book you recommended by Dennie
Hatch?
Michael:
Dennison Hatch, yes.
Jason:
Well you were saying that had a lot of archives. Was that the same
sort of thing? Or is there more that you can find on your site for
instance.
Michael:
Well Dennie Hatch has a couple different websites. His book I think
is called “Who’s Mailing What”. He did something similar, he's been
doing it a long longer than I have. He has a service where he has
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archived tens of thousands of direct mail letters, direct mail pieces.
So let's say in your company you want to create a direct mail
package for a marketing seminar. Well, you can call Dennison
Hatch and access his archives and for $50 or $60 he'll fax you the
entire direct mail piece that Jay Abraham used to promote the
Master My Marketing program. Let's say you're a carpet
manufacturer and you're coming out with a new carpet sweeper,
you can contact Dennie Hatch at his website and pay $50 or $60
and he'll fax you the entire last Oreck, Oreck Vacuum direct mail
promotion. He archives and collects this stuff, then again what he
does for direct mail pieces, I kind of do on the Internet for editorial
style magazine and newspaper ads.
Jason:
Back to when you were talking about Jay Abraham stuff that you
sell. That's a big chunk of your business, right?
Michael:
Right.
Jason:
Is that how you make most of your dough?
Michael:
That's how I make most of my dough.
Jason:
I'm just curious now, did you ever get concerned that Jay Abraham
or any of his people might try to make some sort of case that you
can't be doing this?
Michael:
Yes, absolutely, that was a big fear of mine and something that
almost kept me from doing it, but what I was doing, I wasn't
breaking any laws. What I am doing is nothing different than a used
bookstore. A used bookstore buys used books and they resell it. I'm
buying used seminar material from the original attendees and just
reselling it. Now, I knew that if I crossed the line even once, and
counterfeited or make unauthorized copies of anything, that would
be the end of my business, and I was challenged by Abraham’s
attorneys very early on and because of when I started, I knew I had
to play it straight from the very beginning, so when I was
challenged, he asked to see proof of checks that I was really buying
these seminars from original attendees. So I went to my file and I
photocopied about 25 cancelled checks and Federal Expressed
him, a UPS Next Day envelope to his attorney the copies of the
checks as proof that what I was doing was legitimate.
Jason:
Then they backed off the case at that point?
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Michael:
Yes, he appreciated me working with them so quickly, and it was
complete proof and evidence that what I was doing was legitimate.
Jason:
Well if he thinks about it, if he’s a smart marketer, which I know he
is, he probably realizes that as long as you are not crossing that
line, as long as you are only promoting his original materials you
are actually doing him a further service.
Michael:
I am doing him a service, and I'm sure he's intelligent enough to
realize it. I am his number one fan, I am promoting him in a big
way, and the money I make from buying and reselling his seminars
is really nothing compared to what he gets in the lifetime value of
the customer. I may not be doing this 3 or 4 years from now, but all
those people that I've educated through my audio recordings or
through the materials they have bought from me that he really
couldn't sell to because Jay Abraham had a price structure set
where his stuff wasn't cheap and that was his niche. The very high
prices--he couldn't discount his stuff, in essence I am a vehicle to
get Jay Abraham products into the hands of a different market that
he would have never gotten into in the first place.
Jason:
And they might get hooked and they might buy some high-end, high
priced Jay Abraham product that's new that maybe you don't even
have yet.
Michael:
I'm sure that's happened already. I'm sure it will happen in the
future.
Jason:
So you really are doing him a service. But when I think about when
I look at your site and I think about how much emphasis there is on
Jay Abraham as an individual marketer, what really made you
select him out of all the other guys.
Michael:
In my story I got into it, and it was all from personal experience. I
had acquired a set of a $20,000 seminar I paid $50 for and I had
sold it sold it up on eBay. And I sold it for $1,700. So because Jay
Abraham seminars were $20,000 and $15,000 and $5,000, the
price was set so high that when I came in and offered them at $500
or $600 or $700, it seemed like a steal, and it is a steal compared
to that price. Someone can get the same information at 1/5th the
price. Because he set the value of his stuff so high, it just made
financial sense that Jay Abraham products was where the money
is.
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Jason:
Not necessarily that you think he's the best marketer in the world,
it's that there was money you smelled over there.
Michael:
I think he is the best and the most complete. I think he is in my
opinion the best marketer in the world. It wasn't just money
motivated.
Jason:
It was a perfect marriage with what he charges so much, with a
high-perceived value of his products and they are kind of rare and
you can get all of them.
Michael:
And another reason why do I focus on Jay Abraham products.
Because if I was everything to someone looking for marketing
seminars and I didn't have a unique selling proposition, my niche is:
I'm the guy who can get the Jay Abraham products for a lot less
than what you would pay for them if you got them from him at retail.
That's my niche and you can't throw too many things at someone,
even though I have different products on my site, Jay Abraham is
the one I want to be remembered for.
Jason:
How to you rate those Dan Kennedy, my next favorite, what are
your thoughts compared to him?
Michael:
I think Dan Kennedy’s a great marketer. I think you can learn from
all of them. I particularly like Dan Kennedy's stuff. I have a joint
venture with someone where I have most of Dan Kennedy's
products up on my site but you can get Dan Kennedy products dirt
cheap off of eBay and from multiple resellers because Dan
Kennedy sold the master resell rights to all his products to maybe
20 or 30 people around the world. So I can’t compete in price with
what other people are selling Dan Kennedy products for.
Jason:
I was wondering if Dan Kennedy ever studied Jay Abraham or did
Jay Abraham study Dan Kennedy? He does cross over in
information. You've studied Jay Abraham more than me; I'm more
of a Dan Kennedy buff. I’m curious as I read more of Abraham’s
material to se if they cross over and tell a lot of the same story or
not.
Michael:
I'm sure they do. There's one common denominator with all these
guys. They are rabid students. Jay Abraham studies Dan Kennedy,
I’m sure, and Dan Kennedy studies Jay Abraham and anyone
who's really interested in marketing and is passionate about it
studies everything they can get their hands on. They're just vultures
for good marketing information, they'll devour and look and try and
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learn from anyone they can. Jay has endorsed Dan Kennedy
products to his list. I'm sure in some ways Dan Kennedy has
endorsed Jay Abraham products to his list in some way, and there
is cross over. You know a lot of the stuff is rehash, but that's no big
deal because you may like a personality better, you may like to
learn from Dan Kennedy, you may like his style, his personality,
where Jay Abraham you may not be receptive to listening to him
because you don't like the sound of his voice.
Jason:
That's very true.
Michael:
The way he uses big words, a lot of people think Jay Abraham
comes across as arrogant.
Jason:
Yes I even kind of think that, but I still respect him and will listen to
him any day because I know he knows more than me and he's
made a lot more money than I have.
Michael:
Right. Well, everyone's an individual and every person responds to
someone differently and we're all different so you never know
where that right fit's going to be. So that's why I tell people "you're
really benefiting by learning from all of them because you may find
a favorite guy you may be really open to and more receptive to their
message because after all that's all you want, you want to learn the
message and you want to also get it from different points of
perspective and it enhances your ability to learn.
Jason:
Amazing how into marketing you are and that’s why I really enjoy
talking to you because I really thought I was a marketing geek and I
look at your library you have, it's very impressive to a marketer like
me.
Michael:
It’s nice to meet people like you because it's almost like a little
fraternity and we can't really talk too much to our spouses or
girlfriends about this stuff. Where your center of influence, most of
them don’t even care about it. But there are people just like us who
are fascinated by marketing and have the passion we both have for
it.
Jason:
If you look at these relationships of Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy
and like Gary Halbert and the stuff they have all together and the
way they cross over, and you can see that they were a little crew, a
little fraternity that they grew up together in their generation and
they’re different from us. We're the mostly younger bucks and
we've got a new set of rules and new medium, the internet that we
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play by and I look at it like this, that we are going to be, me, you,
and a couple of the people who are going to be the next Jay
Abrahams and Dan Kennedy and Gary Halberts.
Michael:
That's exactly right. There was a group of marketing people way
before them that are not even alive now.
Jason:
They studied them, we're studying some of these guys that are just
names and I really think that eventually we're all going to have
these same relationships and we're going to be talking in seminars
about each other and all that we've learned from one another and
feeding off of each other. And that’s he neat thing about it. We’ve
talked about the camaraderie and the fraternity.
Michael:
That's exactly right, if you're into marketing you meet people who
are like you and there's no doubt relationships start to be formed
and joint ventures and endorsements and you look at Jay Abraham,
some of his earlier products when Jay Abraham did his 1990
Protégé seminar where he put 900 people through intensive week
long training on how to be a marketing consultant. And a lot of his
product, he paid Gary Halbert to come on board and be one of the
mentors to all the students he put through. he also paid Gary
Hilbert money to use in his supplemental materials the attendees
got when they signed up for the $20000 seminar. In particular the
product called "Sign Me Up For Your Marketing Eyes Only". You
have like a year and a half's worth of Gary Halbert's newsletter.
Now back then, you couldn't get it unless you paid $200 a year for
the subscription but that endorsement that Jay gave endorsing
Gary Halbert’s newsletter by putting it in his products is extremely
valuable to Gary Halbert. Gary Halbert I’m sure has done
endorsements for him, too, in those earlier days. They used to see
each other and these speakers at the early seminars when they did
seminars together, even when they started from the very beginning,
so you're absolutely right.
Jason:
I used to look at those, and am guilty of almost being afraid of
telling people out of a kind of a selfish fear that they might go over
there and go to them for all their knowledge. I learned that if you
really want to make serious money, you’ve got to be really free and
generous and super giving with your knowledge. I’ve learned for
instance that just by telling people that hey, Michael Senoff is one
of my favorite marketers, even though I'm sure I'm sending some
people over to you that they’ll respect me because the are going to
learn a lot from you and they're going to respect me as the guy that
told them.
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Michael:
They'll remember that you're the guy that turned them onto me,
that's correct.
Jason:
And they know that we all will eventually will hear maybe you talked
about me, and you all say that Jason Ryan Isakson is a guy that I
like to do business with and they'll remember that we represent
greatness in marketing, we teach certain principles that are
undisputed and are proven, tried and tested and all the big dogs of
the past use. How old are you? How long have you been running
hardtofindseminars.com?
Michael:
I'm 38 years old; I’ll be 39 March 2nd. I’ve been running the Hard
To Find Seminars since the beginning of 2001. That is when I first
started it. It all started when I bought that seminar. I was just trying
to learn. I had a pen manufacturing business even back then I was
manufacturing a pen that was a red eye remover pen. A pen that
removes red eye from photographs caused by your camera and I
wanted to learn how to sell more of my pens and that's what got me
interested looking for information on how to sell more pens, and I
was exposed to Jay Abraham through an audio tape and through a
video tape and then I found this seminar that was used from a lady
in San Diego that I bought for $50. But I had heard about eBay and
I remember eBay’s stock was shooting up through the roof and my
brother-in-law told me about it and I went to the site and I said,
"This is incredible, I want to sell something on eBay". I didn't have a
digital camera; I didn't know how to use a digital camera. I didn’t
know how to upload a picture onto eBay. I was pretty computer
illiterate. It was all very new to me. I had a big learning curve. When
I started hardtofindseminars.com, I had some assistance. I had met
a marketing coach, his name was Ramon Williams. Great
marketing guy. I have a whole hour audio recording. You can hear
what a genius he is. He is really skilled at the Internet. He took me
under his wing as my marketing coach and helped me get set up
my first website which was called michaelsenoff.com. He had an
emergency in his family, his mom passed away and he just
disappeared. I couldn't even get into my site, and I was left to fend
for myself, so I had to learn this stuff on my own and that’s when it
all started.
Jason:
That was tough.
Michael:
Yeah, it was tough, where the hell was this guy? I was
disappointed. I was totally dependent on him and I just had to learn
it on my own. Finally do it myself so I’m pretty self-reliant and I had
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late nights and early mornings and studied and through experience
and asked questions and learned to do it just good enough. I’m no
expert on the Internet. I can do just what I need to do just about 20
or 30% to get what I need done. I could learn a lot more but I just
wanted to be able to control and do it myself. There's a big
advantage to being able to understand and use the Internet and
upload files and develop a website and to use Front Page. You're
way far ahead of the game if you take the time and invest to learn
to do it yourself, because when you rely on other people, you're
hesitant to make changes, you spend a ton of money and there's
just some huge disadvantages because you're relying on someone
else.
End of part one.
Jason:
Can you make 100% of your income from your online endeavors or
are you able to totally support your family with your websites?
Michael:
All my income is made through my Hard To Find Seminars
business and my pen manufacturing business. My Hard To Find
Ads website, my Monaco products website which is all my different
pens. That's correct, my pen business and my Hard To Find
Seminars business is all the money that comes in and that supports
my business, my family. I don't do anything else. I don't have any
other kind of job except the stuff I'm doing on line.
Jason:
Which one of those two, between your pens and the Hard To Find
Seminars, which one of those two is the biggest producer?
Michael:
The biggest producer? Pen business has been the biggest
producer because I've sold probably close to 750,000 pens since I
started. Pen business is great. To make a product for 17 cents and
to be able to wholesale them by the hundreds for a $1.50 or a
$1.25 is great. When I figured out how to manufacture a pen in the
back of my house without any equipment that was just incredible,
because these things take up very little room. I'll give you an
example; I just had a pen order from a company called Cardinal
Brands. Cardinal Brands is in all the Office Max’s. They have a little
display in the Office Max stores where, you've heard of
scrapbooking, where women take photos of their kids?
Jason:
It's big stuff these days.
Michael:
It's a huge thing called the scrapbooking industry and I was selling
my redeye pens and my ph testing pens and my vanishing ink pens
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to the scrapbooking industry to retail stores. They buy them from
me wholesale in boxes of 100 for $150 a box. My cost is about $17
for a hundred, so I can easily clear a net of $100 every time I sold a
box, but then I got a call from Cardinal Brands, they found me on
the Internet. They were looking for a redeye pen that they can put
in these little displays and they placed an initial order for 6,000
redeye pens. And 6000 redeye pens, I gave them a price of 67
cents, I know what my cost is, and I’m going to make 50 cents on
each one. We made them up in 3 days. I've got a nanny here who
takes care of my 14 month old, and when the kid's napping, she's
making pens. I actually had her come in 2 Saturdays in a row, and
we finished up the pens. It's 3000 bucks, and what did I have to do?
Nothing, it's all set up, I’ve got all the pen parts here. She makes
them, I put them in bags of 100 and off they go.
Jason:
And you're producing this pen product right in your house.
Michael:
Right in the back of my house. And I've got a whole virtual tour of
the back of my house and exactly how we manufacture the pens
right at my website at idpen.com. When I was really hustling the
redeye pens a couple years back, I couldn't handle the
manufacturing and I farmed it out. I found a pen manufacturer to do
the entire fulfillment and all the imprinting on the pens and I would
order from him 30,000 or 40,000 at a time.
Jason:
Still doing that?
Michael:
No, I'm not. My costs to imprint the pen was 7 cents and it was a
hassle because I had to put up front money just for the imprint on
the pen and if you screw up that imprint, you're stuck with the pens,
you see? For my redeye pens, I don't even offer an imprint on the
pen; I just buy the pen parts from my pen supplier blank. They're
just black pens, and I put a different color plug on the end which
tells me what pen it is and the display tells what the pen does and
no one really cares if there's an imprint on the pen. What they care
about is what the pen will do for them.
Jason:
Did you figure out how to add ink to anything? Or are you just pretty
much assembling parts that are mostly already put together?
Michael:
My nanny assembles all the parts, they're preassembled. There is a
process to do it, which is something that I've finally figured out on
my own. If you went and tried to do this on your own, you would
have a huge learning curve. So there's little things I've learned.
With my pen business, I sell a pen licensing opportunity where I'll
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teach people how to do exactly what I've been doing. Once you
know to make a pen, you can put any kind of juice in it, any kind of
liquid in it that solves a problem and you have a product.
Jason:
So you're actually having the chemical or whatever little soakerupper?
Michael:
Yes, that's correct. There's a little filter inside the pen, almost like a
little Magic Marker. Remember when you were a kid and you took
the Magic Marker apart? Then you see that little filter that looks like
a little tampon?
Jason:
Yeah or like a cigarette butt.
Michael:
That's correct, a certain material that holds the ink and there's
different materials. You need different materials for different inks. It
depends on what kind of ink, there's some chemistry involved which
I have expert access to with one of the largest ink manufacturers.
You just buy everything separate. I buy my ink separate; I buy the
tips that go on the pens separate, I buy the plastic pen parts
separate. And I have my displays, which I had made. It's a real
easy process once I figured it out. I was talking to my wife about
this. We were laughing because when I first started in the early
days, imagine these filters, and we're making thousands of pens
and I didn't know how the heck do I get the ink inside this filter. I
couldn't figure it out. We thought, well maybe we had to take
syringes and squirt it in, and for years, and this is a true story, for
years I had the girls making my pens. They would put 2 of the little
filters like they're putting 2 cigarettes in their mouth, they would
bend their head down into the pot of where the ink was and have to
suck it in there like a straw. And we'd do it two by two.
Jason:
Did you get ink in your mouth or anything?
Michael:
No, you never got ink in your mouth, but what we were doing wasn't
the safest thing. And it was just only until I figured out that that
never needed to be done. All I needed to do was take these and
soak them and they would absorb, self absorb, and I could do 300
or 400 at a time. And because I never even thought about it or ever
gave much thought to it, thinking is so rarely done. Finally I did
some thinking to figure out a better way how to do this and that
really solved a lot of problems for me to be able to get the ink inside
there without this laborious process. That's how I started doing the
ink.
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Jason:
Wow, that is interesting. When did you first get your first Internet
connection?
Michael:
I'll tell you, I was one of the very first people to have high-speed
cable Internet connection through Road Runner. I was single, living
in Pacific Beach in San Diego, California and Road Runner was
being tested in only two areas in the United States. One was San
Diego, Pacific Beach and one was somewhere in New York. I think
I had an AOL dialup connection back in 1995. I had the high-speed
access almost just a year after that, and I've had it ever since.
Jason:
So '95 was the first year you actually got on the Internet? So what
were you doing before you got on the Internet, you were still doing
your pens?
Michael:
I was just doing my pen manufacturing business then.
Jason:
What were you doing before that?
Michael:
Before that, and that's all in my bio, after I graduated from the
University of Alabama, I had met a buddy out there and we both
wanted to come out to California and we came out to California and
got involved in--we were doing multilevel marketing. I was just
searching, searching for something. When I was at the University of
Alabama, I had started a business where I started manufacturing tie
dye t-shirts. I opened a location, it was a retail store called Tiki Tie
Dye, and I was making and selling tie dye t-shirts. I started selling
them at the student union building.
Jason:
You actually owned a retail outlet?
Michael:
I had a retail outlet, I lived in the back of my store and I had this tie
dye business and I was selling and manufacturing tie dye t-shirts. I
had 7 employees, college kids, I had a secretary. I had rent, I had
inventory. I was selling to some of the large department stores in
the south. Department stores, once they see that something's
successful; they all jump on the bandwagon because they are all
connected with each other. With department stores, you have to
finance everything, you've got to borrow money from the bank, it
was all the traditional things that brick and mortar business goes
through and I saw all those negatives. I mean I worked my butt off, I
made some OK money, but it was very labor intensive, the labor
was killing me. I did pretty well but I didn't want those negatives.
There had to be a better way to make money then all these hassles
of running a business, managing employees, dealing with
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accountants, dealing with borrowing money, financing, and all that
stuff. The entire overhead, the rent, and I wanted a better way, and
that's when I started searching for something better. I got out of the
University of Alabama, I closed my store. I brought all my inventory
with me to Nashville, my brother was living in Nashville,
Tennessee, so I went up there and lived with him for a year. I didn't
even know I was going to California at that time. And while I was
hanging out there, I was pretty flush with cash from the tie dye
business and I was selling off my remaining inventory and I was
kind of searching for something better. And then I came out to
California with a buddy of mine, I was still searching, looking into
multilevel marketing, different kind of get rich quick stuff that you
probably experienced when you first came on the internet. Looking
for the easy way. I hadn't found my passion or my niche. But I kept
trying and it was a great learning experience, you know the training
I got from being involved in multilevel marketing was invaluable,
there was some great training.
Jason:
I look back at some of the stuff I did in those days, I was just
listening to a Dan Kennedy tape recently that you'll find almost
every great marketer will tell you that they did some heavy duty
selling like in the ditches, the trenches, some sort of selling
vacuums door to door, some selling pots and pans door to door,
something that was kind of grueling.
Michael:
That's right, well I did. I can remember as a kid, I would hustle
greeting cards door to door in my neighborhood. When I was at
Alabama in the evenings during the summer, I would go out and
paint address numbers on curbs.
Jason:
I did that, too.
Michael:
Did you do that?
Jason:
Actually my brother had someone...I called my business, I named
my business CyTex, I just thought it sounded cool. I think I heard
Cyber at one point just as the Internet was getting going. And I
called this little business CyTex, and I went down and bought some
stencils at the hardware store and I just went and stuck little flyers
on everyone's door right in the doorknob where I figured they
couldn't miss it. It just said CyTex is coming through next week into
your neighborhood and everyone's getting their curbs painted, and
it was kind of like a bandwagon thing, so you'd better not miss out,
or you're going to look like the neighbor with the ugly curb. Oh my
goodness, that was actually a lucrative little business.
15
Michael:
Absolutely. Now I wasn't as sophisticated then, I didn't know
anything about direct marketing. You were able to leverage it by
using a flyer, and advertisement to sell the service. I was just
knocking on the doors, and when someone answered, I would say
"Hey, my name is Michael Senoff, I'm with Safety First, I’m in the
neighborhood and I'm doing the address numbers on the curbs in
case of any kind of emergency where you need ambulance, fire,
police. We paint a four inch letter." You know you just give them the
spiel.
Jason:
You probably got a better return as far as how many contacts
because you had that personal touch going, too.
Michael:
Yes, that's probably true. I remember a lesson in pricing. Well, how
much can I sell this for, and I started out doing it maybe $3 and
then I go, "Let me try $5". Then I took $5 and then $7, then $10. I
would just feel it out, and if someone displayed a level of interest, I
would charge him or her $20.
Jason:
My average was about $15 per curb.
Michael:
And you could negotiate. And then I went on to do peepholes.
Jason:
That’s more involved. You have to get the drill out for that.
Michael:
Oh yes. I've got a whole story about my blue Makita drill and I
bought a blue Makita drill and you buy the peepholes at Home
Depot for a couple bucks apiece. You go to find the neighborhoods
with new houses or new homes being built where there are no
windows on the side and they have wooden doors with no way to
view who’s outside the door. And you knock on the door and you
say, "I'm doing the peepholes in the neighborhood". They say, "OK,
how much?" $20, you drill the hole, you screw the peephole in, then
you're done.
Jason:
You did it right on the spot?
Michael:
Right on the spot, you've got your drill in your hand.
Jason:
That was pretty cool; you just show them that, hey, you want to see
a peephole in there in a minute.
Michael:
You're here right now, and you show them. And that was all direct
sales. When I was staying with my brother up in Nashville, he
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would go to work, he was working with a company called Anexter,
and he would go work an 8 hour, 9 hour, 10 hour day and come
home and maybe make $150 and when he came home, I borrowed
his car. I would go into the neighborhood before it got dark and I
would be out an hour and a half and come back with the same
amount of money.
Jason:
That's great. These things we do when we're younger, they really
do build character and they set the foundation and I realize they're
not stupid or trivial, they are part of almost every great successful
marketer.
Michael:
Back then I wanted to learn how to sell, and that's what I was
studying with Zig Ziegler, Brian Trace. I thought learning how to sell
was it. And that is important. You know Zig Ziegler's stuff you learn
secrets of closing the sale and you learn all these closing
techniques and things like that that you have to memorize. Some of
that stuff was great learning. Some of that stuff is great, but then,
when I got turned on to marketing, I realized marketing was really
the leverage that takes your selling ability and multiplies it. And
that's when everything changed.
Jason:
You just reminded me of something, in the old days, I went to work
for this little window shop. They sell dual pane windows and if you
wanted to see a hustler, this guy was so funny. The guy had this
big long ponytail, he was the owner, but no one ever sees him, he
just sends out the troops. He directed us to do things that were so-I'd say, immoral. He would tell you when you're setting up
appointments, they would tell you basically that the house that
you're going to, you would get a list of houses to go to. I never did
it; I backed out when I heard their marketing techniques. It just
always cracked me up when I think about it, he was saying what
you need to do and I wish I had recorded it, so people could hear
what he was saying. What you’ve got to do when you're in the
house, first of all, he had specific rules that were so funny. You've
got to find out where the man of the house sits. Try to identify which
chair, what it’s going to look like, now you’ve got to make sure you
sit in that. 'Cause if he gets in his "man of the house" chair, he's
going to be in the driver's seat. And he's going to. The first thing
you do, you sit in his chair and you're in control. He's going to feel a
little bit awkward. Everyone in the family, in the household, is going
to recognize you're in the king's chair and you are in command.
Before you even sit down in that chair, if the TV's on, it may sound
a little rough, you say, "I'm just going to turn this TV off so we can
focus and get some business done here." No TV interruptions, you
17
just turn it off, take the captain's chair. Make sure you get a drink
from them, get them to welcome you in, and then tell them your
head’s really hurting, you've got a horrible, horrible headache going
on, and oh, I feel like I'm going to throw up, it's so horrible. They’ll
try to offer you stuff but then if they don't, "Can I get like an aspirin
or something to get me through this?" Because they are going to be
feeling sorry for you, they're going to feel like they know you and all
of this stuff. It's so funny--these are the kind of tactics this guy used
to run his company with.
Michael:
This guy knew what works. He had a set of rules that was selling
those dual pane windows and was successful.
Jason:
He got so serious about it, if you couldn't close, cause you were
like, more or less, like a little soldier ant, and he knows you're not a
marketing genius yet, necessarily. He would say, "do not leave the
house until you got the order." If they are saying they will think
about it, they're not sure, he would say "Can I use your phone real
quick?” and they would say "yeah" and you would call and start
sweating on the phone and in the background you're going, "I'm
sorry, I’m sorry, I know, I know, I know", then you start stuttering
and making up excuses, looking like you're sweating. Then you tell
the people "My boss, I'm going to get fired. I'm kind of in heat here;
he needs to maybe talk to you. Could you just talk to him for a
second?" And he gets on the phone and does the closing from
there. This is how it's done
Michael:
That’s how it’s done and there are some great illustrations about
selling. There are two movies. One is called "Tin Men” with Danny
Devito, and the other one is called "Glengarry Glen Ross". It's
about a group of salesmen who were selling, like timeshares. It’s
really, really good. Absolutely. Even Claude Hopkins the greatest
copywriter of all times, he would knock on doors and do direct
selling. David Oglevy was in direct sales. Gary Halbert sold
encyclopedias. I'm sure Jay Abraham knocked on a lot of doors.
Jason:
It is a common denominator. That’s what they had in common.
Michael:
Ross Perot sold newspapers. It is a common denominator. That
initial direct sales experience is invaluable.
Jason:
When would you say was first moment in life was that you first
realized you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
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Michael:
I don't know. Even as a kid, I used to sell cinnamon toothpicks and
selling bubblegum. I was maybe in 5th or 6th grade. I sold Cutco
Cutlery, which was a great experience. That was my first year out
of college and I came back to Atlanta and I worked for a company
called Alcas Corporation and they were a direct marketing company
selling cutlery and it was called Cutco. The greatest cutlery in the
world. It took me 15 or 16 years to really realize how great this stuff
is and I finally have an entire set of it.
Jason: a door-to-door salesman just nailed me yesterday. This guy came to my
door, my first reaction is I look at him and he had a squirt bottle in
one hand and a towel in the other and I was starting to smell
salesman real quick and I was busy trying to get rid of him and he
starts...this guy, he was good, I actually got his name and phone
number and told him...I want to take you out of the cleaning world
because you're good. After I heard his little pitch, it was
phenomenal, but then it turned a little bit ugly. This guy is going
around with his bottle spraying and cleaning all these little things.
I'm telling him "I don't think so", and he says, "Watch this", and he's
spraying little parts of the window in front of us, little parts of the
trim, aluminum trim down below on the doorstep. He ran over to my
car was nearby and he's starts spraying on the rim right there. He
was just like "watch this stuff work, watch this stuff work".
Michael:
That's great.
Jason:
I'm sitting here watching this guy and he went from enemies one
minute, where I'm, like "get off my porch, you're annoying me" to
where I'm watching this stuff clean and I'm looking at this, it was
like magic, he turned this rust corroded stuff and it turned spotless,
sparkling, shiny. I couldn't believe this. It’s not just the selling, it's
watching the stuff do it's thing. You know the big trick I later find out
is he puts a little bit of
Jason:
Muriatic acid.
Michael:
Oh really?
Jason:
Yeah.
Michael:
How did you find that out?
Jason:
Well, I got some other cleaners and I ended up--he sold me--he
took a toothbrush, first of all. And he put some of this cleaner on the
19
toothbrush, and there was a spot on my sidewalk, or porch,
sidewalk in front of the porch, and he started scrubbing in this dirty
area of the concrete. And it just turned it like, white, and I went
"wow", it almost made like a stain out amongst the dirty concrete,
yeah, so I'm kind of like, almost "Why don't you the whole thing,
there, turkey, while you're at it". You know, sucking me in on this. I
bought a big, concentrated bottle for $33, the stuff's so darned
impressive. And he was back cruising around the neighborhood
and I got his name and number because I said "You're good with
your product, this is pretty neat, I want to get you working for me.
I've got some pretty big sales stuff, I do marketing stuff." I took
some of that product, I just wanted to test it. My own paranoia
mixed with curiosity got the best of me and I took some of that
solution that he just sold me and it had a sealed top so I knew it
was the real stuff, and I got a toothbrush, and old toothbrush and
dipped it just like he did and I did it right beside his because I
wanted to see it work. It didn’t touch it, it didn't do anything.
Michael:
Really? So what did you do?
Jason:
So, I went and tracked him down. He hadn't gotten far by now. I told
him about it, I said, "I'm telling you, I can work with you, you're a
really good sales person but be honest, that's not the same stuff.
You want to come back and see, and I'll show you." No ones ever
done this, gone to the trouble you did, I guess I'm a little more
analytical than most, but I put a couple teaspoons of muriatic acid
in there, that stuff is heavy-duty, it burns anything right off anything.
You can muriatic acid on stuff, it will eat the chrome right off your
bumper.
Michael:
Did he give you your money back?
Jason:
He ended up giving me half off, I didn't really push him because I
liked the guy even though he was doing that, and even though I
thinks that's really wrong and I still liked the guy.
Michael:
But there is a really good lesson in that. Aside from him conning
you, he didn't take your no for an answer and all he had to do was
demonstrate. You have to demonstrate your product when you're
knocking on the door. You have to prove it to them, you have to
show them. They have to see it with their own eyes. And this is how
you sell, if you're not selling in person, face to face, you can do
these same things through writing a sales letter, through your
website. You can demonstrate, you can prove with pictures like in
my bio, in my story. Everything I say I back up. I've got pictures, of
20
me, of my family, that I've traveled to Europe. I've got pictures of
my car being towed, I've got proof. You have to prove everything,
especially when you're marketing on the Internet.
Jason:
Can you describe your first moment when you tasted your first bit of
what you call real success?
Michael:
I'm not even there yet. I think I have some success and you know
how you have that growth curve, you know how they show you in
multilevel, where you want to get in to the ground floor? I think that
this year I am positioned at that growth stage where it's going to
start going straight up.
Jason:
That's great that you're so humble and you say...I look at you and I
see someone so successful like myself. You probably see your
goals are very lofty, you don't even see yourself necessarily getting
real successful yet.
Michael:
You know how Tony Robbins talks to people who are
multimillionaires? You know money really has nothing to do with it,
but I've found my home and my niche, which is marketing and
helping people, and you know I got a call from a guy, he mentioned
his name. I didn't remember talking to him but after talking to him
for awhile, I did remember that he had inquired about my pen
business and he didn't have a lot of money and he wanted to do
something, he was in New York and he had this tourism business
where he took people on these personal tours through New York
City. He was born and raised there and he was passionate about it.
For a couple hundred bucks, he would take you on a 5-hour private
tour in nooks and cranny of New York that you would never, ever
find in a tour guide. And he called and he had seen my Hard to Find
Ads sign, and he called me today and said "Mike, I just want to call
you and say how thankful I am and how grateful I am that you put
this Hard To Find Ad site together. And for your audio recordings. I
really appreciate it”, a call like that means a lot to me when I get
emails from people that say they love the site or how one of my
audio recordings on the site has helped them make money or
stimulated ideas. That's the stuff I feed on, that's what makes it all
worthwhile.
Jason:
How would you say you found your niche?
Michael:
I think I found my niche by just moving forward. You may not know
or what you want to go or what you want to do but if you keep
moving, keep doing it, it comes together. I think my niche is
21
becoming...up on my website I had consulting services, and I had
copywriting services and this, and that and that. And I just realized
I'm going to take all that stuff down, because what I'm best at is
interviewing people. Doing audio interviews and taking these audio
interviews and crafting sales messages almost like a sales letter,
but more effective, and I think there is a lot of advantages, which
maybe we can go into or now about why an audio interview, in an
interview style, with just two people talking to one another,
providing good valuable information will outsell the best written
sales letter ever.
Jason:
I can see all the power that's in your site. You've harnessed
something that's phenomenal. I wonder did you find this from
someone else, or did you come up with this technique all on your
own?
Michael:
Well, look; I've always been saying there's got to be a better way.
The lazy part of me, there's got to be a better way, there’s got to be
an easier say. And I'm always questioning everybody, so as I'm
researching all these great copywriters, and as you learn that most
everybody copies everyone, they don't have the courage to be
original or to try new things because it’s like the blind leading the
blind. They just think if someone else is doing it that it must be
working so there's very few people out there really playing the
game and trying to be original. Everyone has great ideas, but they
discount them their little voice inside them says, nah, that’s not
going to work or they hear their mom saying that’s a stupid idea
and they bury it and they never go through. But one thing I’ve
learned when I get an idea that pops in my head, I will capture it, I’ll
write it down, I’ll put it into a little database and I won’t lose it, and
especially if I have a hunch on something I’ll not even think about it
and I will do it.
Jason:
I learned to not tell people about things I was doing, I kind of kept it
a secret. Did you ever do that?
Michael:
You don't want to share it with anybody but like-minded people.
Like I share it with you because you because I know you're
interested in this stuff, but it's also a good lesson because you
know with your kids, you're not going to be like that.
Jason:
Exactly.
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Michael:
With my kid, anything's possible, any idea he had I talk about it, I
know not to be negative about any idea or dream he has. I
encourage it because if you can dream it and you can believe it,
reality is just down the road. It's just a matter of doing the steps in
between to get to it.
Jason:
I know you're pretty much right, there's pretty much there is no limit.
Which brings me to another question. Does your wife or any others
in your family assist you in any way with your business?
Michael:
No. My wife does not assist me in my business at all, and I pretty
much want it that way. I work out of the house; we see each other a
lot. She works 3 days a week. My wife's mother and father have a
tooling shop called Kahn's Machinery. They make parts for the
aerospace industry and they have a manufacturing plant and
they've been working together for their whole life. I don't want my
wife involved in the business; I would rather just hire somebody
else to help me. And she's not interested in doing it, really.
Jason:
So tell me what were the early days, like when you first put up your
Hard To Find Seminars site. What were the earliest days like; do
you remember the first month or months after when you set that
site up?
Michael:
Yeah, when I set that site up, it was at michaelsenoff.com and I
was selling--was a doing a lot of selling--of Jay Abraham stuff on
eBay. And when I first started on selling on eBay, I was getting
some great prices. I was making great money on eBay and that's all
I was doing was eBay, exclusively. Putting my Jay Abraham tapes
and seminars and the things that I found. I would have to hunt for
the information and buy it from the original attendees and I would
sell it. For instance, if I bought for, say $250 I bought everything
that someone that went to a $20,000 Protégé seminar got, I would
3 sets of seminar tapes, and I would get a contract guide, an
advertising guide. I would get "Your Marketing Genius at Work", I
would get "Sign Me Up For Your Marketing Eyes Only". I would get
this videotape of Gary Halbert, a videotape of this guy named
Kendrick Cleveland, a videotape of this guy name Harry Pickens.
When he sells a seminar, he loads you up on so many bonuses, so
I would get all this stuff and then I would sell them separate on
eBay. It was exciting. I was just doing eBay auctions, I knew when I
found a set of stuff and picked it up from somebody, even if I paid
$500 it was easily over $1,000 net profit in my pocket. So it was
almost like hunting for gold. If I could find someone willing to sell
23
me all their stuff that's sitting in a box in their basement or in their
attic, that is over $1,000 in my pocket, it's just a matter of time.
Jason:
It's funny that you did that because I used to think about more
unrealistic things to do, like I once saw a documentary where they
were showing some people that got lucky and they found some old
people that were having a yard sale, or after they died someone
else was having a yard sale of their stuff, and you find a shoebox
full of baseball cards that were 50 years old. And I used to think,
gosh, it shows that a kid that found that stuff, or an adult, turned
around and sold some of the cards in there for as much as $10,000
or $20,000 apiece. I thought that would be a cool thing to get into.
But you've found that you can track down something you can more
easily find, or not easily, but it's something attainable.
Michael:
That's right. What you're talking about is a great appeal, it's a great
story, and as a matter of fact, you can see these types of stories of
exactly what you're talking about in the National Enquirer. And I'm
going to have a set of stories put up on hardtofindads.com, different
story ideas that will give someone who wants to advertise, an
editorial style ad, a type of angle, and that is one of the common
stories that I see almost every week in the National Enquirer. It's
there for a reason, it's like winning the lottery, but it's not the lottery.
It's just as good, finding something at a garage sale that you buy for
$2 and you turn around and it ends up being worth millions. And
that is basically what I'm doing. I'm finding stuff in people's garages
and basements that is not worth anything to them and I'm buying it
and reselling it for a nice profit.
Jason:
You've got a formula; you know how to get it.
Michael:
I have a formula. Now this is really interesting and I've given a lot of
thought to this. My little niche market, anyone who understands
what I do, with some thinking and common sense would know that
this formula can be applied to anybody. I’ve almost wanted to give it
some kind of name like reverse marketing or something. Where
most marketing people will try and sell a product or service to a
market and will be happy with one or two percent. They invest
enormous amounts of capital and advertising in lead generation,
selling marketing just to get sales to that 1 or 2%. I'm going in the
back door. I’m waiting for that moving parade to pass. So when
someone buys, those 1 or 2% people who buy that product or
service, they have a very high level of interest or they would not
have bought that stuff. Correct?
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Jason:
Right.
Michael:
Well, what I do, and in human nature, that interest goes away within
time. So I'm going back to them when that interest is barely even a
memory in their mind. And they'll remember it, and then I'm saying:
"Hey, by the way, do you have any of that old Jay Abraham stuff
from that seminar 10 years ago?" So their passion index, they're
not as passionate about it anymore. Many things have happened to
them. People have died, they've moved, they're not in that space of
their life anymore, are they?
Jason:
No, their goals more or less have just moved on.
Michael:
It's just a memory. So now the value to them is not near what it was
when they paid for $20,000 for the seminar. But there's always a
secondary market for anything out there. Now you could take this
same idea and do it with any product or service. You could go to
the SRDS and find, for instance, let's say you wanted to find
something with a market that you know is selling. I’ll give you an
example. Remember that badge-a-minute kit where you make the
little pins and you can sell them at school and make money? Well,
that company's been around forever. You've seen it in Entrepreneur
forever. There's people, if you go on eBay and search Badge-aMinute, you'll see people are bidding on Badge-a-Minute kits. Now
you can go to SRDS and you can rent the Badge-A-Minute mailing
list. But what you want to do is rent the oldest list possible. you
want to rent a list maybe from 5 years old so you can contact the
list owner and say, "Do you have the list from 5 years old?" And
you can buy them at a huge discount because obviously names
from 5 years are real interesting to the owner of Badge-A-Minute
are they? So you pick them up for nothing and you can do a
mailing, the same type of mailing I do for my Jay Abraham stuff
which is, I may have a buyer for your old Badge-A-Minute stuff that
you bought from Badge-A-Minute Corporation. If you're interested
in selling, give me a call.
Jason:
That's a powerful technique, I've heard a lot about people that kind
of go with the reverse angle, go with buying lists of people that
were into something, like you said. They were in heat back then,
and they bought a ton of stuff and now, like you said, it’s just a
memory they're willing to in some cases just give it to you.
Michael:
I'll give you another example of something. If someone wanted to
make some quick money buying and reselling something. I have
tested this. I sent a fax to businesses, it was a broadcast fax. and
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all it said was “I may be interested in buying your extra inventory, if
you're interested in selling, please call Michael Senoff, 858-2747851” and I had my company name and address. And they didn't
know what inventory I was talking about, but every business is
sitting on some kind of inventory. That passion index is gone.
Jason:
Not just businesses, people.
Michael:
People, businesses have equipment. You wouldn't believe the calls.
My phone started ringing immediately...
Jason:
Where were you putting that ad?
Michael:
I had a list of fax numbers. I had a list in Texas, just playing around.
And the response, my phone started ringing off the hook with all
kinds of people that had inventory they had to sell.
Jason:
What's your favorite technique of getting visitors to your website?
Michael:
The main technique I have is by people finding me, looking for Jay
Abraham, Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy and stuff through search
word, through key words. I have a Google search word for Jay
Abraham where I'm always number one. If anyone types in Jay
Abraham, they are going to see my ad, and that brings them there.
The people are finding out a little bit more about my websites and
my audio recordings and my Hard to Find Ads website. I was online
last night and I saw all these people. I had over 200 people register
at my Hard to Find Ads site and I'm, like, "where are these coming
from?" When they register they fill out a form asking them "How did
you hear about the site?” And they said "Marcus Allen's email". I
go, “Can you send me the email where you heard about Hard to
Find Ads”, and he used it as his tip of the day. So my Hard To Find
Ads site was the tip of the day from yesterday and people have
been just pouring in registering to the site.
Jason:
Well you were just saying, too, how you were looking even to me
for some advice on how to get more unique visitors to your sites
and you just brought up your own golden point right there that
you're already doing, but I'm wondering if you're doing anymore
than that. What we were talking about is your term the first term
article marketing?
Michael:
Right.
26
Jason:
Have you done any of that? Basically not looking like you're selling,
you're just getting in an e-zine a news story about a guy that's got
this information that's all free?
Michael:
I haven't, and I'll tell you why. Because I done very little promotion
of my website because, number one, I've been building the content
to where I'm at a place where I feel like, OK, I've got enough really
fantastic content. I was to stop building content and I want to start
promoting. Part of this, everyone's guilty of, it's always fun to
develop products and build content.
Jason:
That's the funnest part.
Michael:
And marketing, it's work. You've got to make phone calls. you've
got to do joint ventures. And it's not as fun, right?
Jason:
Right.
Michael:
Some of it may be procrastination but some of it is genuine. I really
want to get it. And there’s a lot of great information, I have another
30 or 40 hours of audio recordings that’s being put together, and I'll
have up on the site within about 60 days. And I said after this, I'm
not doing anymore audio, not doing any more editing, and then I'm
going to do nothing but promote the site. I have not been promoting
the site for another reason. Because buying and selling Jay
Abraham material is not an unlimited supply of product. This stuff is
really hard to find. I don't have an unlimited supply of it.
Jason:
Your name in your site is for real, it's really hard to find.
Michael:
It really is for real, so I've also been working on building some of my
own products that I can sell and finding and acquiring the licensing
rights to other products that complement my site, so the bottom line
is I don't want to get all these people to my site, and people want
Jay Abraham stuff and other stuff, and I'm not able to fulfill it. So I
am limited and that has kept me from really promoting it heavy. But
I do have a lot of products of my own and a lot of things I can sell
on my site, so I'm still, even though it takes so much time, building
more products and more services to have on my site. To sell
people once I get them there.
Jason:
Well you've really gone a great route though because you've done
what only the 1%ers do, and in the past couple years have learned
myself, it's one of the most powerful things that you're using and it's
a great problem to be able to have, to say that you've been building
27
content and product and developing so long that you haven't had as
much time to market because eventually it's all going to come back
to you. When you look at your website, you can see that it's so
packed with goodies, and I try to do the same thing and focus less,
like the 95 or 99% of all the other websites on the website that are
all one big long sales letter, and you can see these guys, while
you've been developing a product and really making something
creative, that people can use and is an interest of yours, other
people have been building one long sales letter and that's what
they thing is someday going to make them rich. "I'll just keep
adding more sales letter pages to my website". You can have all
the sales letters you want on your site, if you don't give people
something for free, that has value, they're not going to respect you,
they’re not going to trust you. They're not going to see any reason
why they should even stay at your website.
Michael:
Exactly, you know what it comes down to. You and I both know the
hours, the late nights staying up until twelve o'clock, one o'clock at
night, working on your site, writing copy, the bottom line is, it is a
hell of a hot of work, and it's a time commitment and it's an
investment and if you're not willing to put it in, in many cases,
you're just not going to be top dog. You have got to pay your dues.
There's no free lunch. And these hours of editing that I do, and
rewriting of the copy and putting up new pages and all this will pay
me back many, many, many thousands of dollars down the future,
because once the work is done, it's done. And you have to pay your
dues, if you think you're going to get out there and market
something without any effort, you're dreaming, and that's why there
are so few players, because the real reason is most people don't
want to do the work. If you just do the work you'll be on top.
Jason:
The problem is, too that most people, especially internet marketers
just think that getting that sale, closing that sale, whatever it is, just
sell, sell, sell. They miss that whole point which you do so
eloquently on your website and I try to do on mine, to educate.
Which I think is the most important part, to be an Internet
entrepreneur and I think you would agree with me. To education
people first. your site is very educational, and I teach in my course,
and things I say to people, never put a sales letter up front. Never
make your stuff look sales-y. Make yourself look generous. They
will have plenty of time to find your sales letter, and they will hunt
down the order button once you've already educated them. And
they will thank you so much for the free education you've given
them. Even me, with all my Internet marketing experience, I found
myself very educated by your website, that is so powerful. You've
28
definitely harnessed something most people don't know about, and
will never even understand how important it is to give.
Michael:
I appreciate that and the bottom line, like I said, I've realized this
just recently, when I want to talk to someone I'll give them all I've
got, even if it takes a lot of time out of my schedule. If it's realistic, I
give them my best. When I'm on the phone doing a recording or
consulting with them, I'll give them my best, even if I don't get paid
for it. ‘Cause it will come back. It's the natural, the universal law.
You'll give and you'll receive.
Jason:
You've even taught me some of that. One of the things I learned
from you, even on the phone, I've been kind of guilty of maybe not
helping customers who call me with questions very well. I would be
too short with them in the past. Like "I'm doing something really
important here, leave me alone". You kind of think, you've taught
me that even in the past few weeks, I've started taking the great
time that you take with people on the phone. And I see that what's
happened is that when you put in the time, these people just love
you and they spoil you. They come back and they're hooked, they
want to buy more and more of my stuff. And so, it's just a win-win
situation, and that's the income that I’ve learned from you.
Michael:
That's good, but also you've got to keep in mind that you've got to
be realistic, there's only so many hours in the day, so if you’re going
to be giving something to someone and you're going to be spending
an hour on the phone with them, record the damned thing. So the
next time the guy calls you and you're busy and he has the same
question that you've just spent an hour on the phone with, you can
direct them to a recording, and then you've leveraged yourself.
Jason:
That's what I didn't say, is that I have been recording them, and I've
been asking them up front if it's OK. And I tell them what I'm going
to do here is give them a marketing info, basically a consulting
session, which I would normally charge as much as $500 for in an
hour, "I'm going to give it to you for free. All I want is to be able to
record that conversation so I can leverage it and other people can
benefit from it later and it may mean I may even be selling it. Is that
Ok with you?" They're always like, "Give me the free consulting
lesson now, that's fine, whatever, let's do it." And I spend the time
and they see you're working as hard as you can to help them,
because obviously if you're going to be showing this to other people
later on, you want this to be your best foot forward and so people
get to see me at my very best. Customers on the line with me get to
29
hear me at my very best when I'm really, really trying. Again, a winwin for everyone.
Michael:
It totally works, doesn't it?
Jason:
Again, I learned that from you. I thought I knew it all, and I get a big
head and you know I've studied every marketer, every book, and I
feel like I know it all. Then you come along and I see this thing
you're doing and I'm, like, that's powerful stuff. And I'm probably
going to be doing that, say forever into the future. There's no
reason not to do it.
Michael:
There's no reason for you not to. You took the step and you've got
the ability to record a conversation, and what do you have to do,
you press a button. And when you do it, you know you're recorded,
you want to be your best, you want to give your best and then
you've got it forever. You can use those recordings, you can sell
them, you can educate people and save your time from being on
the phone answering the same stuff over and over again and every
business should do that. I'll give you an example. And it's just doing
a little bit every day. That's really, really important, and it's really
powerful. I have a little video camera I've had since my son was
born. He's 4 years old. I have a little bit of video of him every single
day of his life, and he's over 4 years old. Every single day. Now,
what's that going to mean to him when he's 20 or 30 or 40. A little
bit of video, maybe a minute or two or when you see your kids
doing something really cute, then you go, I've got to video this. It's
just a little bit every day. it doesn't take much effort to do just a little
bit every day. But over time, as time passes, and as our memories
fade, it's captured forever. And that's the same thing, as you're
doing your business, you can be teaching people. Like someone
can be sitting in watching you do what you do, how you earn
money, following your life. I'm not saying you have to record
everything of your life, but just a little bit of what you do by pressing
a button and in 5, 10, 15 years, you've got a masterpiece.
End of part 3
END of part 3
Jason:
That's powerful stuff, is that you would say is your single most
unique marketing technique, what sets you apart, your USP if you
will?
Michael:
I think that this has given me the leverage that I need to really build
a masterpiece. I imagine hundreds of hours of recordings of all
30
kinds of really interesting things on marketing, advertising,
business, entrepreneurship over time, let's say in the next 5 years.
That can be there for anybody that wants to learn about business.
New kids coming out of college, children. It's all there and with the
Internet, it's accessible to anyone in the world. It's something that
will outlive me.
Jason:
Right. Well, do you have some examples of any success stories
where you have students or customers that have come to you and
have really boosted their business, their internet business in a big
way?
Michael:
I have 500 testimonials up on my website.
Jason:
That's impressive enough...
Michael:
Every time someone sends me a testimonial, I'll copy and paste it
and put it up on a web page so it's there. Let's say it's a guy who
becomes real successful on the Internet and his name is very
popular and there's people searching, it will pull up that testimonial
and it will link them to my site.
Jason:
With that kind of content on your site, I guarantee you they'll come
there in the future, they're going to come forward. I had a guy, one
in particular who always...I taught him the ropes eight years ago,
and I don't even feel like I know that much. But he says he learned
it all from me and now he makes half a million dollars a year.
Michael:
He's grateful to you.
Jason:
He gives me the credit, and I just want to say, man, I don't know. I
think you're already just genetically talented, but just really need to
do this. He still hangs by me, calls me all the time. We do joint
venture deals. It's what business is all about in Internet marketing,
so I try to think about the next one of those kind of guys I'm going to
get.
Michael:
I've got lots of guys that have been influenced by my stuff and
many we'll never hear about. It's probably something I need to
solicit and find out some real specific tangible things; ways that
people have been influenced. I’m sure it’s going to happen. Maybe
it's happened in some aspects already, but, it'll happen down the
road as time goes by.
31
Jason:
How many, would you say, orders do you need to come in each
day to make a living off of?
Michael:
My living expenses, I'm not a real materialistic person. I live in a
blue-collar neighborhood in Claremont, which is a couple miles
from the beach in San Diego, California. In a single-family
residence. We have got a 15-year mortgage. Our mortgage
payments are about eleven hundred bucks a month. My one child's
in a private school. I don't need to make that much money to
support myself.
Jason:
How much would you say, how many number of orders would you
need in your mind in order to at least support the family on?
Michael:
I've never really figured it out that way.
Jason:
Do you have any number that's like a real kick ass day or is it all
based on some amount?
Michael:
It's almost like pulling the wheel at the slot machine. I'll give you an
example. Right before the New Year, I got an order for a seminar
through PayPal off my site for $500. Then he emailed me looking
for some other stuff, and then literally over the next 3 or 4 hours, he
had ordered almost $3,000 worth of stuff off my site. All through
PayPal, buy it now buttons.
Jason:
How much?
Michael:
About $3,000 worth of stuff. And I had everything in stock. That was
a great order. you never know when it's going to come. You never
know when the phone is going to ring. I sell stuff every week;
mostly I sell something every day. Yesterday I got an order for 200
pens, 100 red eye pens, and 100 ph pens.
Jason:
How much did you make off of that?
Michael:
I sold those at $1.25 apiece; I netted a couple hundred bucks. In
that same day, I sold to a guy in the UK a Mr. X book, which I sell
for $300. I sold that Mr. X book for the same price Jay Abraham
sells it for on his site.
Jason:
That one-day you were talking about that guy that ended up buying
$3,000 worth of products from you. Is that like a rare thing?
Michael:
I don't get those every day.
32
Jason:
How many of those have you had since you started out in your
whole venture?
Michael:
Maybe 5 or 6. Most are $500 per seminar, $600, and $300, couple
hundred. The lowest price stuff on my Hard To Find Seminars is
around $300.
Jason:
Do you find there are any other people that are doing what you're
doing?
Michael:
Nothing with the same intensity. There are people who are reselling
marketing seminars; you can find them on eBay. There is Jay
Abraham stuff sold on eBay, but it's becoming less and less.
There's a lot of counterfeit stuff on there. And I stress a lot of that
on the site, there's a lot of counterfeit stuff out there.
Jason:
Yeah, I've been very leery of that, too, mostly because I figure the
people you might buy it from, or the kind of people that might have
it. I don't know, you just can't trust them at all.
Michael:
I tell them, now look, if you can find Jay Abraham products on eBay
cheaper, go for it. But I'll tell you, the set of criteria you need to
follow. You need to make sure that person on eBay has a good
feedback rating; you need to make sure there are photographs of
the product. You need to verify where the product came from
because, Abraham and his daughter, they monitor those eBay
auctions. And they keep a list of them and they do not like people
selling counterfeit Jay Abraham stuff from Abraham publications.
And you don't want to be caught with it. And if you do get it and the
quality is so poor you're just cheating yourself. If you can't hear the
damned thing, you might miss out on the one great idea that might
make you a million.
Jason:
I got one once that was counterfeited; I could tell it was
counterfeited. It was a good knock off, the only way I could tell was,
it was pretty obvious, not by the packaging or anything, and I had to
turn my bass down to minus 10. It goes from a range of minus 10 to
plus 10, plus 5 is normal, I had to put it not just at zero, but into the
negative to get all the bass sound. So I finally turned it down to
negative 10 and I could just kind get a hint with my ear, and yeah, I
realized, OK I just got a sort of knock off counterfeit copy.
Michael:
I've been burned myself. I've have people who want to sell me back
products, and then they sell me back a counterfeit product, that
33
wasn't the original product I sold. All my products I sell have a label
on them. At least 90% of the Products Have My Hard To Find
Seminars label and it's very hard to take it off. And also I have a
whole page on how to detect and identify Jay Abraham products on
my website. If you email I can send you a link to that, I have
pictures of stuff that, counterfeit products that I think are suspect
from eBay sellers. Counterfeit products hurt my business.
Jason:
It's kind of neat though, what you're saying is that you've really got
no competition.
Michael:
The only competition I have is counterfeit products, but really it is
no competition.
Jason:
The competition would be another guy who is obtaining the real
authentic stuff, and if there's not one else doing that, and they're all
just knock offs, they aren't really even competitors.
Michael:
There are people on eBay who are selling genuine Jay Abraham
stuff. Not all of the eBay stuff is counterfeit. I’m saying there are a
lot of them. The only competition would be legitimate people who
went to the seminars and want to sell it on eBay.
Jason:
And even the people on eBay that are selling authentic Jay
Abraham material are still not competition.
Michael:
No, they're not competition.
Jason:
Because they have no idea that if they had a site that gave, and
gave and gave, like yours, they would have people eating out of
their hand, and they would already have a business relationship
and trust before they even purchase it.
Michael:
There's no one even close. And you know why? Because no one's
willing to put the work in that I've put in.
Jason:
Right, I almost looked at your site as like, before I talked to you,
"This guys is seriously obsessive or something, man."
[Michael laughs]
Jason:
Maybe you are, but maybe all successful marketers are obsessive.
It's in their genes; maybe that's one of the future dreams.
34
Michael:
I push myself because I know, in life, there are always cresses, and
you never know when your next crisis is around the corner.
Whether your parent dies, or there is an emergency. And I have
many cresses in my life, or at least in the last 4 or 5 years. When
you get some free time and there's no crisis happening, I want to
work my butt off because I know that's life. One day everything's
running smooth and the next day you may have a crisis in your life
where you're not going to be able to put in this time and work into
what you want to do.
Jason:
The kind of things that you and me do that are highly creative in
nature and involve a lot of looking into the future, and really just
using the deep parts of your brain. I find that you're totally dead on
about these traumatic things happening in life, tragedies, and I
always find that's it's so nice that if something does happen that is
devastating in life, when they do happen it's so nice to look at and
fall back on the products, whatever you created in your better days.
Michael:
That's right, everything I'm doing is an investment in my future.
Jason:
Yes, if something does happen, you've captured a time in your life
when things weren’t screwing up and you can use that forever.
Michael:
That's correct.
Jason:
And that's what I try to do, too. Because I realize that some things
can happen even little things, like when I get in a fight with
somebody like a friend or something, and it messes with my mind.
Michael:
And you may not feel like working. You may be no good for the
whole week. I may be feeling depressed this week, and I may not
be near my peak state to talk with you on the phone. I may not want
to talk to you.
Jason:
Right, you just can't come up with any good stuff, so yes, I'm like
you, on those good days I try to, when I'm in a good mood and I
feel like teaching the world I'm there for 12 hours doing great stuff.
And once it's done, it's done.
Michael:
Yeah, I may do it if there's only so many hours in the day, I've got a
family, I’ve got 2 kids, they take up a lot of time and I have to fight
for time when my kids are sleeping and my wife is sleeping, I can
be up until twelve or one o'clock at night. And I've even thought
about extending that, you know, I could be up until twelve o'clock
and be up at seven. Seven hours of sleep and still feel pretty good.
35
But I want to push it, see if I can do 3 o'clock, I've heard of people
who sleep 3 hours a night, 4 hours a night, and they function fine.
Jason:
Oh boy, I could never do that. I have to have 7 hours to be fully...
Michael:
Everyone's different but there are people like Bucky Fuller. I don't
know who he is, but I know Albert Einstein worked with him. I think I
heard this tape Mark Victor Hanson was talking about, Bucky Fuller
only slept 3 hours a night. And there are some people who can
function on 3 hours of sleep. Enthusiasm will keep you awake. And
if you're enthusiastic about something, you have something going,
you can just go at it.
Jason:
That's right, I've tried to sleep when I'm working on some product or
some project that I knew was going to be a hit, I've already test
marketed it, and the markets already begging for it. And I can't
sleep. I try to sit down on the couch and get a little bit of quiet time
and I find myself running upstairs to my home office. I cannot keep
my hands off the keyboard. I must finish it; it's just so exciting.
Michael:
I did the same thing last night. I think I got in bed around 10:30. We
had turned the TV off and I was, like "Shelley, I can't sleep, I'm
getting up." I'm getting ready to go on a trip to Atlanta tomorrow for
a week. There were some things I needed to write down I wanted to
make sure I didn't forget, and actually came in the office and I was
up until 12:30 working on the website and just doing other stuff.
And when I got tired I went to sleep.
Jason:
Don't we have it tough? I'm curious--how big is your market, have
you ever figured it out approximately how many people are in this
niche market?
Michael:
It's tiny, I mean the market I have is such a small niche compared
to other markets out there in the marketplace.
Jason:
But that makes it powerful.
Michael:
It's tiny, that's why I say, what I'm doing could be applied to any
kind of market. Here's an idea I had for breast enhancement
supplements. You could get the mailing list of a company, the
number one breast enhancement supplement company, you can
get it from SRDS, and you could send out a list to breast
supplement buyers from maybe a year ago, and can ask them if
they have any extra. Because they get loaded up on that stuff and
36
then you can sell it on eBay. I mean you could do what I'm doing
with anything. With much larger markets than what I have.
Jason:
Have you done many joint ventures?
Michael:
I haven't done many joint ventures, and like I said, it's probably my
fault because I'm so busy creating, but I wrote something down and
I know exactly how and what I need to be doing from now on. I've
always had a little thing in my list of things to do "Do joint ventures"
because joint ventures are the most effective way to make money.
And this is what I want to do. I have so many contacts of people
who fill out the form from my free CD ROM with all the audio
recordings on there. And if you look at the questions I ask that
someone has to fill out to get that CD ROM, they have to tell me
their name, they have to tell me their street address, their email
address, their city, state, zip code. I ask them their URL address,
their phone number, their fax number, and I ask them do they learn
better by reading, audio or video. I ask them what type of business
they're in and I ask them to be specific, I ask them who their
favorite marketing teacher is, I ask them how old they are, how long
they've been in business, how did they discover my site. How many
names on their customer list. How would they rate their marketing
skills and sale skills between a 1 and 10? How much net profit do
you think you make on an average customer per year before taxes?
What licensing rights to any products do you have? Are you willing
to rent your customer list? Would it be OK if I called you to talk
about your business? If so, what time? What one big skill are you
missing to get results you're looking for? What expertise can you
talk passionately about for hours, and would you be willing to share
to the world on this site at no cost, you get rights to recordings,
what do you least like about marketing and why? And I'll ask, which
is really important, this has helped me big time, I ask them and tell
them, that they can't get the CD unless they offer me one simple
idea for the improvement of my site. Absolutely no exceptions. So I
have over 1,000 ideas for the improvement of my site, which when I
get them, if it's a good idea, I act on them immediately.
Jason:
People, are any of them walking off the site?
Michael:
Oh, I'm sure a lot of them, but that's fine, because anyone who's
really passionate about marketing, this is a test. This separates the
men from the boys. I only want the people who are most interested.
Jason:
That's great, it's true, it's kind of like, if you can't answer that
question, then you're not going to be the kind of person.
37
Michael:
Then your interest isn't there. The biggest waste you can do in this
business is try to sell to someone who's not interested in what you
have.
Jason:
What you're really there is qualification. Preventing yourself from
dealing with people you might not want to be dealing with.
Michael:
Exactly, I have the cream of the crop, the people with the highest
level of interest who have to do some thinking and some work to
get the CD.
Jason:
You said you don't work with any family and you don't have joint
ventures, do you have any other people that are kind of working
under you at all that you contract things out to?
Michael:
No one in the way of generating sales and income for me. But I do
have a team of people who help me run the business from
typesetters to a web guy to someone who does audio editing for me
to people that I've found through eLance and web sourcing, so I
have a team behind me that really does help me that I use. Writers,
copywriters, all kinds, people who edit spelling mistakes.
Jason:
If you didn't have those people, if you had to do it 100% on your
own, could you still do it?
Michael:
You would never, ever, ever be done, and that's so important
because you are not going to be able to do it yourself. You have to
farm it out; you have to pay somebody to do it. Can I give you an
example? This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long
time. I have 78 audio recordings up on the site right now. Each one
there are written transcripts that you can print and look through a
PDF file. I want to take each one of these transcripts. I want to take
each one and create them as an individual report, a paper and ink
product. I just put up this morning an eLance posting that I want to
go check out. For me to do this, I would never get it done, I have to
farm it out. So I'm looking for someone who loves to write
headlines. And I told them to go to my site, go to the audio clips
and look at the transcripts for one or two of the audio recordings.
And what they are going to have to do is read through the entire
transcript and pick out headlines, create bullet points and hot
buttons that they are intrigued about through the recording, that
they read about. And they're going to create cover pages for each
one of these transcripts. Because that cover page and those little
bullet points and those headlines of the titillating facts and
38
interesting things in that recording are going to be on the front page
of that report. Now that's a lot of work, but I'm going to pay
someone to do it. And that's the only way's it going to get done.
Jason:
Now you’ve mentioned eLance a couple of times. You're a big fan
of eLance?
Michael:
Huge, because eLance is like eBay, you can fine any product on
eBay, eLance you can find any kind of service provider you need.
You can find accountants; you can find typesetters, copywriters. It's
services that you can farm out to people all over the world.
Jason:
Like having a bunch of employees right there waiting for you. You
don't even have to have them as employees.
Michael:
Nope. No hassles of employees and that is beautiful, especially
when I remember my experiences of having 6 employees with my
tie dye retail store. It's great. You can post a job, and I bet I have
people bidding on the project right now. You'll get bids on your
project, literally, within 20 or 30 minutes from the time it posts. So I
could have someone starting this project today.
Jason:
Did you ever get any sort of education in marketing, or is it all self
taught.
Michael:
Self-taught, ironically I did major in advertising at the University of
Alabama and minored in marketing. You know what, I didn't learn
anything from that.
Jason:
You learned your stuff in the street like me, huh?
Michael:
Exactly, it's just coincidence that I'm in advertising and marketing. I
picked those majors because it was the easiest way to get through
school. The communications department, and I wanted to get
through college, it was a lot of fun but I wasn't a serious student.
Jason:
Would you consider yourself a gifted headline writer or ad
copywriter?
Michael:
I just don't have the patience; I'm probably like you, my mind's all
over the place. It takes real discipline to sit down and write copy. I
think I'm a good editor. I think I can look at a piece and edit, take
things out that shouldn't be there.
39
Jason:
You and I would make a great team, because I'm a good headline
writer and ad copywriter. You’re able to be really humble in saying
you don't consider yourself a gifted headline writer. Most people I
talk to that are in marketing, even the ones that suck eggs, that I
have to just cringe when I look at what they write. I'll ask them that
question and they'll still tell me, they build themselves up.
Michael:
The only real test is does the market buy your product from your
headline?
Jason:
But I'm just wondering if, maybe that's why you used to wrap
yourself with so many headlines and ad copy so you don't need to
be...you've got in the library, it's like having your own separate brain
headlines and ad copy.
Michael:
It's like having a brain on tap. I’ll go to Hard to Find Ads, I can
review those headlines, I can take any of them, and I’ll modify them
to something I'm trying to do. I don't have to be creative.
Jason:
That's great, that's one of the number one questions I encounter
with my customers and students. It's the most common thing that I
teach on a daily basis, I end up doing little fun sessions of headline
and ad copy clinics right there and teach them a lesson. It's a
biggest roadblock in their way. It's like "Oh my god, I don't want to
sit down and write ad copy, I don't like coming up with headlines,
and I can't do it". So you've really got the answer right there with
the Hard to Find Ads. That's a great relief to some people to know
they don't have to be creative, they don't have to be real talented.
They can just rely on the efforts of others. Not necessarily steal
them, but at least they can borrow bits and pieces and put things
together that have been successful.
Michael:
It's a great head start, but you know what, if you want to be the
absolute best, that isn't even enough. Because you have to really
understand what it takes to write headlines. And I, believe it or not,
am just learning that because I just got the book "Breakthrough
Advertising" by Eugene Schwartz. And the first 3 chapters on
nothing but headlines, and he goes into detail on how to write
headlines and what you must consider with your market of stuff so
deep that I've never seen it anywhere else. And I'm learning things
that I haven't learned at all.
Jason:
I would think with all your studies with Jay Abraham that you
would...doesn't he cover a lot of that?
40
Michael:
Nothing like this, nothing like this. Not in detail on copywriting.
Jason:
What is the person's name?
Michael:
Eugene Schwartz.
Jason:
I'll have to remember that.
Michael:
I have it on my site. If you go to the products page, and you go to
"copywriting", I have a speech that Eugene Schwartz did for Phillips
Publishing a few years back. It is the most compelling writing I've
ever read on copywriting. Better than anything I've seen anywhere
on copywriting. You've got to check this out.
Jason:
Yeah, I'll have to check this out.
Michael:
It's a whole new dimension and that's why I love some of this old
stuff when copywriting and advertising was just beginning back in
1915 and 1916 with Claude Hopkins, these were the pioneers,
these guys knew psychology. They were developing this whole
thing called reason why advertising, and reason why selling. And all
they had was paper and pen, all they had was ink and paper to sell
products through words and then technology came, TV, radio, and
that all got scrambled up. You lost all that with the new technology.
But that's why studying these guys back in the beginning with John
E. Kennedy. He's kind of like the guy who taught Albert Luster of
Lord & Thomas what advertising really was.
Jason:
Yeah, I have a date in mind with Kennedy of 1905 for some reason
or other.
Michael:
1905, and Albert Lasker, he wanted to know; he had this burning
question "What is advertising". You can read the whole story up on
my site under John E. Kennedy.
Jason:
That's great, it's so cool to find someone else that's interested in
and has such a passion about this stuff like I do. I'm one of these
guys, some people can't relate to me because I'm such a marketing
geek. I'll sit there and my wife will laugh because I'm watching,
going through looking for--most people try to get away from
infomercials on Sunday morning, I'm actually looking to find
infomercials.
Michael:
Oh yes, my 4 year old, he wants to see Chef Tony and the ultimate
chopper. He knows Set It and Forget It from Ronco's Rotisserie, the
41
Magic Bullet Blender. I love that stuff; I sit there and watch it with
him.
Jason:
Yeah, it's so funny how most people would go, they think you're
watching to consider buying it or something, and you go, no I'm not
going to buy it. I'm watching it to purely study what are obviously
hundreds of thousands of dollars in professional ad copy is to do,
and what comes out. If you see those infomercials over and over,
just like any form of advertising, it means they are working. So I
especially study the ones with guys that have been around and you
see over and over and over. What's the first thing they say? I love
what the very first thing they say, what's their headline.
Michael:
Absolutely. That's right.
Jason:
You're seeing infomercials that may have cost $100,000 to
produce, what was the first thing that was the most important for
them to get across to you?
End of part four
Michael:
I think anyone who has a desire who wants something, if they want
something bad enough and they're willing to do the work, to do the
homework, I think the sky's the limit for anyone. Because like I say,
there are so few players out there. I ask on my list who's your
favorite marketing teacher? I see Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, Jay
Abraham and maybe a handful of other guys. That's it, there isn't
too much competition out there. There are no more than 10 names
I get, and I've asked over 1500 people this question. Joe Polish, he
is really a bright guy. I talked to him personally a long time ago,
even before I got into this because he started as a carpet cleaner
and he does great audio interviews. He kind of influenced me with
audio interviews. He does them with Mark Victor Hansen, Brian
Tracy, all the top dogs. He does a great interview; he's a real
serious student of marketing. I remember listening to him; he was in
the audience of some tapes I was listening to, the Brad Richdale
direct marketing seminar that I bought off television back in 1996. I
heard him in the audience say, "My names Joe Polish of Piranha
Marketing and you're going to see me as one of the greatest
marketing guys in the next 5 or 6 years, this was about 6 years ago,
and sure enough, he's one of the best out there. If you go for it, and
you decide, you'll be there. I've listened to Joe Polish interview
Brad Richdale. He is bright, now I know he got into some trouble,
and I don't know what all the details are. But he is, I think, one of
42
the brightest marketers out there. Hell of a marketer and a great
teacher.
Jason:
Do you have a formula for what you charge for these seminars that
you sell?
Michael:
Formula kind of has to do with how limited they are. If I only have 1
of something, and it's hard to get, I'll put a pretty hefty price tag on
it.
Jason:
So it's really true supply and demand here.
Michael:
Absolutely, supply and demand. Because I know eventually it's
going to go.
Jason:
Do you ask yourself often, how much money is the most I could
possibly get for this, and then sell it for that.
Michael:
I look at what someone will pay if they went to Jay Abraham's site,
or if they went to one of his seminars. And depending on what the
supply is of it, I'll set a price. I can't give this stuff away. I have to
make a good profit in what I'm doing.
Jason:
I have to teach my students, you should charge the most you can
get for anything. People sometimes suffer from a problem that can
hurt their business, which is being too nice of a guy, or too
generous, or just trying to help out too much. Business is dog eat
dog, I believe, it is a cutthroat world and I believe strongly in
charging every penny you can get. If you can get it, and people are
willing to pay it, then that's what it's worth.
Michael:
I had to set up my site outside of eBay. EBay is people interested in
stuff but they are bargain hunters, they are price sensitive. The
people who buy from me on my site are not too concerned with
price. That's the only type of people I want to deal with. When
you're getting a marketing seminar that would cost $10,000 or
$20,000, what, especially if someone has money, a thousand
dollars isn't going to mean anything to that guy. So I have to give
them value for my site, and those really are the only type of people
I want to deal with, I don't want to deal with bargain hunters and
people who are so concerned about price, because those people
who are so concerned about price are not serious about marketing,
because if you're serious about marketing, you understand about
what one good idea can mean to you financially. Have you heard of
FMC?
43
Jason:
Bosley.
Michael:
Tom Bosley. I was sitting there with my son. We were sitting there
watching the infomercial with FMC this morning. And they're
incredible; they're in Chatsworth, California. Their building is like the
size of 6 footballs fields and they have 3,000 different products.
They bring them all over from China and all over the worth, and
they just set their pricing. I'm sitting there thinking, and I
bookmarked their website, and I want to look at all the products
they have. Because anyone that knows marketing and knows
copywriting can go have a company, you have 3000 products to
ship and if you know how to write emotional response direct mail
copy and you understand that pricing has nothing to do with the
product, you could sell a product, not at their suggested retail,
which they may say you buy something for 5 and you sell it for 19,
well with your skills with marketing and advertising and with what
you learn from my site and from you, you could take a product from
SMC, and with good copywriting alone, resell the product for $200.
If you bring out the new benefits that were never brought out in their
real catalog.
Jason:
There are techniques you could use to just blow the door off of
those people that are following that formula, the guidelines. That's
why they say think outside the box.
Michael:
Anyone who has a business and who is selling something is
probably charging too little for his or her product.
Jason:
People often say, well I can start real cheap; I can always raise the
price later. Start out with a seed prices that almost turns people off,
work your way down until people start biting. And that's the price.
When they start biting, you've got it. That's how I do it. And it's
always worked for me. Have you ever considered getting an office
to work out of these days?
Michael:
I have considered it. My wife keeps saying to me, why don't you get
an office? With my kids, it wouldn't make sense because when I
need to be here for the kids, I just have to come from the office. So
I have considered and probably someday, but not right now. Really,
what's an office--I've got a chair, I've got a desk, I've got a huge
monitor and my computer, and I've got some shelves for inventory,
that's all I need.
44
Jason:
Well, I find I'm more efficient at home working in my home office,
because for some reason, it's home and I'm very comfortable, and I
produce, produce, produce, and I tell people that I deal with,
customers and students, that yeah, I work out of my house, and
yeah, I've made millions of dollars working out of my house. That's
inspiring they say, you mean you don't need a big office to do all
this? Absolutely not.
Michael:
It's amazing, with technology and the Internet, you don't. I've got a
copy machine; I've got a fax machine. All you need is a way to
communicate. You've got the phone; you've got the Internet.
Jason:
The truth of it is, as you probably can attest, I'll go on vacation even
with my family, and it should even be an actual vacation. But I tend
to sit in the hotel room with my cell phone and a laptop computer
and I take care of business anywhere. It just shows you it doesn't
matter where you're at. A simple laptop and a cell phone and
people have no idea you're not some big corporation. Are there any
definable differences in the products you offer?
Michael:
When people come to my site, if they're not really familiar with Jay
Abraham or Dan Kennedy or any of these guys, they just don't
know, so they're looking to me for advice. What I like to do, 99% of
the time I want to talk to the person, I want to find out who he is,
what he's doing, what he thinks he's going to accomplish with all
this material. How does he like to study, is he a reader, does he
have a cassette player in his car, does he like watching videos, how
does he like to learn the best. I want to find out about the guy and
what he's trying to do, because a lot of these products will repeat
the same stuff over and over again, so I like to look at myself like a
specialist, like a doctor, so someone comes to me, they tell me the
problem, they tell me how they're feeling, they tell me what they
want to accomplish. I get a feel for what they want to invest, and I'll
sometimes just design packages for them. And put a package, I'll
say, look, if you've got $500 to invest or a thousand to invest I can
set you up with all the marketing information you'll ever need to
study. I'll give you more ideas than you can act on in a lifetime. I
prescribe stuff. Now there are people that come to my site who
know what they want, and they'll just order it. And that's fine, too.
For a lot of people who don't know much about it, they'll look to me
to create a specific package for them and for what they're trying to
accomplish. I keep a list of everything I sell, so I know who has
what. And also on eBay, I catalog every purchase, so I have
someone every month that goes through eBay and types into a
45
database every product that was sold, and I have the eBay screen
name of who bought it. Let's say someone calls...
Jason:
You track other people?
Michael:
I track the sales of Jay Abraham stuff on eBay.
Jason:
That's phenomenal.
Michael:
So, let's say a guy is looking for a PEQ seminar, which is a
seminar, and I don't have it. This happened. I went to my eBay list
and I emailed about 6 people and asked, do you still have that PEQ
seminar you bought off of eBay? If so, would you be interested in
trading for something that I have on my site. And I made a deal, I
traded for something, I had 6 sets of the Mastermind Marketing
2002 seminar. So I traded one for a PEQ. So any of my materials
that I get, even if I have multiples, are like trading cards, they're
valuable to me and they can be traded for other products.
Jason:
Are there times when you won't buy them back?
Michael:
Yeah, depending on how many I have. It all depends on what's
going on with the market.
Jason:
It's pretty darned rare that someone takes something back. The guy
says I read this and it's excellent but now I want to hear something
different. What do you usually charge for taking it back?
Michael:
I won't buy it back from them unless I have it sold for more than
what I would pay to get it from him. Generally, to make this
business work, I have to get this stuff at a steal. That's the only way
that makes this business work, is that I'm picking it up for peanuts
and reselling it for good margins, otherwise it's a waste of my time.
Jason:
Is there a typical rare Jay Abraham product that you want back, that
you kind of ballpark price that you typically give back.
Michael:
Yeah, for instance I need a set of the Protégé training seminar, the
tapes. I probably wouldn't pay more than $150 if someone wanted
to try and sell it back to me. But I would have a much better chance
trading them for something like one of the six sets of my
Mastermind seminars. They're going to get more value. But some
people just want cash, and I won't do it.
Jason:
How much would you charge for that Protégé?
46
Michael:
I think it's up on my site for $650.
Jason:
Do you find that you're using a lot of Jay Abraham techniques and
sales in your presentations?
Michael:
All the time. I'm kind of immersed in it and I'm doing a lot of it
naturally.
Jason:
Is there anything I can help with on your website or to help you with
your business?
Michael:
Yeah, absolutely. I know you've got the internet experience and
different experiences that I don't have and I'm looking forward to
talking with you in more depth, specifically how you could help me.
Absolutely.
Jason:
I think I could. You've got so much to offer, incredible stuff and I'm
looking--we're just two different parts of the Internet. It's like that whole don't mix
my chocolate in your peanut butter. Goodie, I think so, too.
Hi, this is Mike Senoff with www.hardtofindseminars.com I want to thank you for
listening to this interview. If you have any questions at all, or are interested in any
other related marketing products, please visit my site at
www.hardtofindseminars.com. That's www.hardtofindseminars.com . Or feel free
to call me at 858-274-7851.
A listing of my other web site and resources.
47

Two-time Internet Millionaire Jason Isaksen Interviews Michael Senoff

Transcription

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